


The Mirror in the Hallway

by deadendtracks (amonitrate)



Series: the possibility was a blade [4]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Hallucinations, Missing Scene, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 05, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 05:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/deadendtracks
Summary: He remembered saying that, like it was funny, and it was, it was funny, wasn’t it.Missing scene from "The Loop" after Tommy's late night visit to Ada's.





	The Mirror in the Hallway

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Peaky Blinders Emergency Response Challenge, episode 4.
> 
> Definite spoilers for the new series, through episode 5.

He shouldn’t have gone to Ada’s. 

He shouldn’t have-- 

It was late, so late. And he’d said things -- he’d almost said -- he’d said things and he wasn’t certain what he’d told her. When he spoke to Ada these days the words poured out and he couldn’t keep track of them, couldn’t make an accounting afterwards, couldn’t retrace his steps. All he ever remembered was her face, her goddamn face, looking up at him from the dark of the stairs with her dashed hopes and her fucking worry, staring at him in the dark passages of Parliament, always the worry. Worry over what?

Whatever he’d said, yeah. Whatever it was he’d fucking told her.

Seven tonnes. He remembered that part. He’d hate to run out. He remembered saying that, like it was funny, and it was, it was funny, wasn’t it. Back in Small Heath right after the war it had been a constant crawling fear, a preoccupation under everything else, that he’d run out, that someone would find out, that he’d be left without it to face the night. When was the last time any of them had worried over a shilling? When was the last time he’d run out of anything? And now he might never. Might never run out. If he played his cards right. Except he didn’t know what cards he held anymore.

Seven blocks passed before he realized he’d left his car parked in the street in front of Ada’s. He’d just. He’d just put on his cap and closed her door behind him and walked away down the road like he’d only a few streets to cross before he’d find his own door. The dim stairs up to his room on Watery Lane. The brown sticky ball and the pipe. Sleep, however fleeting. He didn’t sleep anymore, that was the problem. He’d seen it in France; lack of sleep drove men mad. 

He stopped and looked around himself and recognized the quiet row of houses and had no bloody idea where he was.

If Ada looked out and saw his car still there she’d worry, she might, she might call someone. She might make a fuss to the wrong sort of people. The doctor who’d been buried in the library while he was buried--

If he did manage to find his car again, and got behind the wheel, he might crash the fucking thing. He didn’t know. He might-- he’d almost-- he’d almost but then he’d seen. What he’d seen.

He hadn’t told Ada everything. He hadn’t--

He shouldn’t drive, should have accepted Ada’s worry and stayed over. He could have just sat in a chair in one of her guest rooms until morning and then left. He had a vial in his pocket. He had enough. 

But he didn’t fucking know where he was. Cozy London street he knew he’d passed a thousand times before. Dark, curtained windows. Everyone asleep where they belonged.

If he found a thoroughfare he might find a cab. Slim chance this time of night, in this part of London, but it was better than standing here in front of some lawyer’s house like a vagabond. Better than having to explain himself to the police, explain what an MP was doing lost in London at three in the morning. He walked on. 

He walked. 

Kept walking.

A bell tolled the half hour as he found a wide avenue. A wide deserted avenue, full of shuttered shops and litter in the gutter. 

He sank to the kerb and waited but nothing stirred. It was Wednesday after all. Everyone in bed.

He took the vial out of his coat pocket. He was fucking cold and it had been hours. Since his office and Mosley with his smirk and his smoke. After he’d injured a leg in the fighting, Mosley had spent most of the war behind a desk. He hadn’t been sent straight back, with a medal and a slap on the back. He’d spent four years behind a desk, Mosley had. 

He supposed Mosley had missed out on the real joys of service, like stealing the fine white horse of the Captain you’d just shot down in front of all your men, knowing not a one of them would ever tell the tale, not to anyone who counted.

The men had buried the body for him. They’d looked on it as an honor.

The laudanum had lost its taste by now. Measured out in careful, prescribed doses. Ada had said it caused the visions. 

As if, perhaps, he hadn’t realized. 

Some time passed. He warmed up, a little, though he could tell his nose and his fingers were still chilled. He’d left his gloves in the car, maybe. He didn’t remember.

The churchbell tolled four times. Four o’clock. Soon enough the bakers would be moving about and some of the shopkeepers and maybe a cab would come and he could take it back to his apartment and--

Someone sat down next to him. It was very quiet now.

He didn’t turn his head. He hadn’t told Ada about the others. The other voices. The other things he saw.

“Why’d you burn me with this fucking thing, anyway?”

Skinny and smudged, John was in his uniform, though it had seen better days. He could tell that much from the movement in the corner of his eye. Sometimes if he didn’t acknowledge them, they went away on their own.

“Thought you’d want it,” he said, before he could stop the words from escaping him. 

“Nah,” John said. “You tell ‘em you want to go on the smoke?”

He lifted a shoulder. Arthur would know. Polly would know.

“Johnny Dogs still got your wagon?”

He took out his cigarette case. Opened it up and snapped it closed, opened it up and snapped it closed. “Yeah.”

“Make it look like an accident,” John said. “You jump from fucking London Bridge they’re gonna figure it out.”

“I got a… one of them capsules,” he said. “Special Branch gives ‘em to their spies.” He’d gotten his from one of his Communist contacts. Not Jessie Eden. Someone else.

“Like in the pictures?” He could never tell the difference between mockery and admiration, in John.

“Yeah, like in the pictures.” It’d be fast, and look like a heart attack. There’d been so much stress, with the crash. Lizzie would figure it out, maybe. But she’d keep it to herself.

“You have it with you?” John asked, as if he wanted to see it, as if maybe he thought Tommy was making it up. Telling stories, like when they’d been kids, and John had begged him to do all the voices.

So he searched his pockets, before he realized. Back at his office at Westminster. In the drawer with his gun. He’d seen-- Mosley had left and he’d opened the drawer and he’d wanted. So much. And then he’d seen her and he’d left and he’d walked for awhile and then he’d been on the bridge and then he’d gotten into his car and driven to Ada’s.

Somewhere in there it had got dark. Somewhere in there it had passed midnight. And he’d left his gun and the capsule in his desk drawer in his office. Open in his office for his secretary to find.

And there wasn’t even any traffic he could walk in front of.

John laughed, like it was funny, and maybe it was.

Maybe it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Horses" by Patti Smith.


End file.
